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Friday, August 30, 2013

At the end of every week, I'll post a round up of my favorite Tumblr posts and links to have been recently hit the blogosphere.

This Date in Native History: Hawai‘i is relearning that it’s not a state—it’s a sovereign kingdom. According to political scientist Dr. Keanu Sai, actions are slowly underway that will disassemble its illegal relationship with the United States, established when the U.S. named Hawai‘i a state on August 21, 1959. Sai and many others are leading the movement for the return of the Hawaiian Kingdom, supported by International Law.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

If you've seen the movie, Pitch Perfect, you know of Kimmy Jin, Becca's unfriendly Korean American roommate who only hangs out with other Asians. While her portrayal, and that of all the other PoC characters in the movie, were problematic and played off of stereotypes for laughs, one of the things that stood out to me was the villainization of Kimmy Jin and her only being friends with other Asian Americans. And since this is around the time students are moving back into their dorms and freshmen are experiencing their first taste of vodka, here are 5 reasons Asian college kids hang out with other Asian college kids.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Entering the dating world is scary for anybody, but for people of color, the experience of dating puts you even more on edge. Thoughts run through your mind like, "Does this guy have a fetish?" "I hope he doesn't say anything racist." "Was I rejected because I was Asian?" "Why does this guy keep talking about lumpia?" "I hope no one calls me China doll."

Here is my experience with dating outside my race.

Up until this point in time I had only dated Pilipinos. I never really thought much of it growing up in a majority Pilipino neighborhood and being involved in Pilipino clubs when I was in college. It made sense that I had only dated Pinoys because that was who I was surrounded by.

Then this guy came along. Let's call him Jeff. He was nice and charming. He was extremely good looking with muscles bulging and everything. I was smitten. Jeff identified himself as mulatto, half white and half black.

We dated for about three months and during this time I always had tiny jabs at me about my race called microaggressions, very subtle comments that imply negative stereotypes about a race or ethnicity. One of the first microaggressions was on our first date. He made the assumption that I was extremely sheltered and never left the city of Berkeley where I lived at the time. Little did he know I grew up in a low-income neighborhood with gang violence and drugs. The house across the street turned into a crack den when I was in high school and there was always that part of the neighborhood you didn't wear red at ever. At the time I also worked in East Oakland, helping academically disengaged students, which to my knowledge is outside of Berkeley. I had not told him any of this yet but he had to draw this conclusion from somewhere: my appearance.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

After a long hiatus, we are back! Sometimes life happens and things don't go the way we want but after these couple of busy months and the current climate around race relations I've been inspired to start writing again.

Though this is a couple weeks late, I wanted to point out how people have been blaming Travyon Martin and the black community for all the injustices that they face. A perfect example Don Lemon's 5 points to fixing the black community:

While I can go point by point and talk about how Don Lemon is wrong on each count, I'm going to talk about the larger issue of internalized racism and respectability politics. There is a lot of stigma around anything associated with the black community. From language to fashion, the black community has created its own culture which has been created from an environment of oppression and is seen by many as inferior. And this results in many folks, such as Don Lemon, blaming black people for their own shortcomings while not looking at the larger picture of oppression and racism.